Ade, who’s forging a career as a presenter on C4, thinks the games has changed perceptions of disability.

In a great interview with Nick Curtis at the Standard, Ade says he hears “people saying: ‘I’ve suddenly seen more disabled people on the streets: where do they come from?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, the bastards, they’ve been hiding underground. Who let them free?’”

“I always thought that as a disabled person I was cool, because difference is cool. Me and my friends were pioneers, going out in the street and playing wheelchair basketball, a sport no one knew about. In 2010 people had an idea about disability sport but didn’t know the characters. It was our job to tell the public who the stars were, give ’em nicknames like ‘the Weir-wolf’ and get them to fall in love with them.”

Although he’s mostly upbeat, Ade drops in a cautious note.

He says the lack of access to public transport “prevents disabled people from playing an active part in society” and the Government’s review of the welfare system “gave the impression that many people with disabilities are lazy, and created a ‘them and us’ mentality”.

It’s this last point that Tanni – the Paralympian who’s now making a name for herself in the Lords – majors on in a hard-hitting interview with the Mirror.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (Photo credit: NCVO)

She contrasts the feel good factor of last summer – “Which exceeded all expectations” – with a hardening of attitudes to benefits claimants.

“I’ve lost track of the number of letters from disabled people who have been spat at in the street. Instead of the deserving and undeserving poor, we have got deserving and undeserving disabled people.”

“One letter I received described how a disabled person was in a bus queue and someone came up and started asking them how many thousands in benefits they were costing. This was a working disabled person who takes nothing in benefits.

“There is suddenly a massive ­mismatch between how Paralympians and everyone else with disabilities are viewed. The irony is that of course there are Paralympians who are losing benefits under welfare reforms.”

2 thoughts on “The starting gun has been fired on the Paralympics Legacy debate”

Despite being the recipient of a lot of disablist abuse such as having things thrown at me, spitting and shoving when I was a teenager I had never heard “DLA” as an insult before this government’s so called welfare reform in 2010 when suddenly disabled people became synonymous with only the benefits some of us claim.

I recently attended an event where there was another group on site playing drinking games and “DLA!” was one of the categories. I was also stared at, had comments made about my impaired and shoved into by young children who weren’t supervised by their adults.

Disability hate crime is apparently one of the most under-reported out there and I can quite believe it. I did report my incidents as part of a wider issue of harassment against the delegates of my event and the police were superb. I couldn’t identify the perpetrators out of large group but the police were willing and able to talk to the leaders of the whole group and members to make it clear that disablist harassment against me and other disabled people was NOT ok.

If people can face it on time/energy/coherence groups, consider reporting even minor incidents of hate crime, staring, verbal remarks, spitting, having things thrown at you, being barged into and more. Hate crime reporting info is at http://report-it.org.uk/disability_hate_crime1 and they shouldn’t try and push you into anything legal, even just stats helps – it raises awareness and lets police and similar target resources accordingly.